IT Value Map: your compass for cloud transformation

In my previous blog, I explained how COBIT 5 provided a robust framework to understand your users’ expectation for IT services. With this knowledge in mind, we can now depict the value that your IT department should provide going forward and how success will be measured – in other words, we can now build your IT Value Map, which is the second phase of Cisco’s Strategic IT Roadmap methodology.

The IT Value Map is vital for any IT organisation that is transitioning to a new operational model (typically, cloud-driven), and that needs to clearly explain its IT Vision & Strategy to all stakeholders involved: employees, users/customers, partners, etc. The IT Value Map is also the first step towards creating an interactive, real-time CIO dashboard — but this is a topic for another blog post.

Here below, I describe the process of building a typical IT Value Map through the lens of three Operational Directorates, supported by six Governance Pillars.

Three Operational Directorates

Operational Directorate 1: User and workspace services

We explore how the organisation can provide a modern working environment to employees and contractors. This means empowering them with cutting-edge collaboration, automation and self-service technologies so that they can meet user needs as quickly and effectively as possible.

Green issues: number of printed pages, number of travels replaced by video conferences

Availability of a policy or code for social media usage

Operational Directorate 2: Business and interoperability services

We look at ensuring that critical business applications are supported in the most economic, secure and efficient way. We want to help organisations create a new-era, application-centric infrastructure and offer services to support and optimise applications and create a true, service-orientated approach.

Example Measurement Metrics:

Number of Full Time Equivalents required to run each Information System

Reuse of open source applications

Satisfaction surveys with client agencies

Operational Directorate 3: Infrastructure and platform services

We consider how to provide a rock-solid, cost-effective, secure and automated IT infrastructure and platform to host all an organisation’s applications. The goal is to reduce financial and environmental waste, increase IT service agility while decreasing costs and provide a secure foundation for a next generation workspace.

Example Measurement Metrics:

Data centre power usage and floor-space

SLA availability and continuity

Cost per Virtual Machine

Speed of service delivery after IT request

Six Governance Pillars

Governance Pillar 1: People, culture and communication

This first pillar looks at Human Resources (HR) and the criticality of how you structure HR to achieving successful change. This spans aligning Business and IT goals to create a deep understanding of the big picture across staff, helping to foster buy-in. It’s also vital to define and share corporate culture and values, communicating them both inside and outside the organisation to create a positive image and a unified approach. This must not be forced by top-down management but should be driven by a bottom-up understanding of and commitment to the deep need for change.

Example Measurement Metrics:

Automated customer satisfaction processes that kick in after each meaningful interaction

An annual employee pulse survey

An intelligent IT skills map to support individual growth

Governance Pillar 2: Strategy and decision-making

The second pillar concerns how to deliver top-down alignment of IT investment decisions with the corporate strategy to ensure the optimal use of resources. The aim is to create a clear view of the organisation’s IT offering, with the whole environment optimised for strategic impact, documented and made transparent.

Example Measurement Metrics:

Vision, Strategy, Execution and Metrics (VSEM)

The creation of a documented IT Governance Model

The documentation of the complete IT service portfolio

Governance Pillar 3: Finance and sourcing optimisation

The third pillar considers how a modern IT procurement strategy can drive operating costs down by 10-15% and optimise IT payback on an ongoing basis. The aim is to ensure that investments are conducted in a smart, value-orientated way.

Example Measurement Metrics:

Cost transparency for all IT services

An up-to-date library of value assessments for each application/service

Benchmarking vs. peer organisation in the region.

Governance Pillar 4: Risk management and cyber security

The fourth pillar looks at how to create secure information flows while empowering civil servants. This involves putting in place processes for confidentiality, authentication, data integrity and availability while delivering state-of-the-art cyber attack protection and remediation.

Example Measurement Metrics:

Build an updated, multi-level risk dashboard

Cyber attack statistics

Bi-yearly penetration test results

Governance Pillar 5: Internal controls and continuous improvement

This fifth pillar is the key to becoming effective and efficient. This entails delivering mechanisms and measurements that enable fact-based decision-making and drive smart behaviour and culture — alongside the continuous improvement of corporate IT processes and practices.

The sixth and final governance pillar considers how the organisation can enable continuous innovation and efficiently reuse existing expertise and know-how. It simultaneously looks at how products and solutions can be managed in a more sustainable way.

Example Measurement Metrics:

Build a product management dashboard

The number and activity of innovation task forces

Create an IT knowledge portal

In my next blog — the last one of this short series on Strategic IT Roadmap for Government Cloud — I’ll explain how to build a multi-year execution plan, based on your users’ requirements and expectations (cf. SITR Phase 1), as well as on your IT Value Map (cf. SITR Phase 2).

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